Mountain View accepts $100,000 grant for universal basic income program

Hmm, let's see: $500 times 12 months times 166 families equals $996,000. But the program budget is $1.4 million. So it takes $404,000 to dole out $996,000. That means that the administrative overhead of the program is 29% of the cost of the program. Compare that to federal programs like SSI, SNAP, school lunch vouchers, housing vouchers, or Medicaid—these all spend less than 8% of their budget on administration. Why is our local program so inefficient?

I’m delighted at the news of the grant, but I’m a little confused by the first sentence of the article. It says “Mountain View's guaranteed basic income pilot program will live to see another year.” Does that mean that this grant will fund the program for an additional year beyond its original schedule? _Voice_, can you clarify what that sentence means?

If “program will be limited to 166 randomly selected” it cannot be “universal”. What a stupid waste of money.